Geography: South East, East Sussex. Most of Lewes council area, part of Wealden council area.

Main population centres: Lewes, Newhaven, Seaford.

Profile: A large, sprawling rural seat covering much of the countryside to the North of Brighton, the South Downs and the valley of the river Ouse. Lewes itself is the small picturesque county town of East Sussex, best known for its extensive and sometimes controversial Guy Fawkes Night celebrations, where effigies of Pope Paul V and contemporary figures, such as Osama bin Laden, are burnt. The country house of Glyndebourne, the site of the annual opera festival, is situated just outside the town. At the southern end of the constituency is the more Labour inclined ferry port of Newhaven and the seaside resort turned dormitory town of Seaford.

Politics: The seat returned Conservative MPs for over a century until it was won by the Liberal Democrat Norman Baker in 1997. It was regained by the Conservatives in 2015.

Current MP

MARIA CAULFIELD (Conservative) Former nurse. Brighton and Hove councillor 2007-2011. Contested Caerphilly 2010. First elected as MP for Lewes in 2015.

LLOYD RUSSELL-MOYLE (Labour) Born 1986, Sussex. Educated at Priory School and Bradford University.

NORMAN BAKER (Liberal Democrat) Born 1957, Aberdeen. Educated at Royal Liberty School and Royal Holloway College. English teacher. Lewes councillor 1987-99, Leader of Lewes council 1991-97, East Sussex councillor 1989-97. Contested Lewes 1992. MP for Lewes 1997 to 2015. Under-Secretary of State for Transport 2010-2013. Minister of State at the Home Office since 2013. A trenchant backbench inquisitor and campaigning MP, Baker stood down as Lib Dem Environment Spokesman in 2006 to concentrate on campaigning for a full investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly. He returned as Lib Dem shadow transport secretary in 2007.

RAY FINCH (UKIP) Engineer. Contested Eastleigh 2010, MEP for South East since 2014.

ALFIE STIRLING (Green) Born 1990. Educated at Priory School and University College London.

I don’t really think this is UKIP territory atall.
It’s basically a mixture of Tory demographics and the kind of demographic where the LDs will still be quite hard to shift.
If there is some UKIP voting, then unfortunately it could be of the type which eats away at the Tory vote rather than the type which clearly exists in other areas where it actually wrong foots and threatens the Lib Dems.

They’ll get an increase to pass the deposit, and the Tories should manage a slight net swing from the Lib Dems
but it’ll be a challenge for them to win – although it’s possible.

I think people confuse the constituency of Lewes with the town (which is a small part) – there are more votes in Seaford and Newhaven and here there are lots of potential UKIP voters. Think LibDems will win but wouldn’t be surprised to see a UKIP surge and an improvement in Labour vote e.g. if there was an election now

Ir Norman Baker remains as the candidate then I am sure the Lib Dems are safe. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine them losing, even with a new candidate (barring a real strange deathwish of a choice).
I know that UKIP polled well at the County elections, but I would be surprised if they got much over 13% at the General Election and the Liberal Democrats will be targetting this seat very heavily.
As for the Labour vote, it should go up but if there is the possibility of preventing a Tory majority and bringing close a Labour/LD coalition, then Labour voters might stay with the Lib Dems. At least, that is what the election literature will suggest.

Seaford isn’t really a LibDem stronghold – it’s fairly competitive between them & the Conservatives. Newhaven & Lewes however definitely are, and the LDs also do well in the other important town, Polegate.

Lembit Opik – I first saw this individual when he ran for the NUS Executive Council as an Independent, dressed as a condom.
The clues were all there that he was a complete prick (sorry, totally out of character for me, but the whole Cheeky Girl thing just drove me spare).
Yep, if he is selected anywhere, the Lib Dems lose.

It’s a funny one really, I think most of the Lib Dim strength is down to the hard work of the local party, but Mr Baker certainly knows how to imprint himself on the local populace. He is probably the difference between the party winning well and just winning. Also, in a bad year, he would probably be the difference between winning and losing.
I have to say that I find him completely unappealling as a character and quite off-putting but people are attracted to different things in a person. Undoubtedly, he is a good MP and a dogged campaigner, I just find him to be remarkably reticent in challenging some of the traditions practised by his constituents if he thinks it might make him unpopular, even if it also makes him look like a hypocrite to outsiders.

I doubt that was a factor, I just believe that the 1997 election was going to do for the Tories in a considerable number of constituencies and the Liberals and then Liberal Democrats were the firmly established challengers with a strong local government base.
If anything, subsequent election results suggest that Tim Rathbone may have been quite liked to keep the Tory vote so strong for so long. Maybe he wasn’t actively disliked, but the effect is the same.
1997 changed a lot of seats, Crosby for Labour for example.

Eastleigh and Winchester are certainly South East – but are they as uniformly Lib Dem as Lewes town itself, where the party typically gets 60-65% of the vote?

They also win in industrial newhaven and middle class Seaford – but nit bt such high margins – which, alomg with Eastbourne suburb Polegate (which is also Lib Dem) offsets the rural areas which are mostly staunchly Tory

Last count I heard was that Easleigh was 32 LD councillors out of 33 or somesuch.. that’s like East Germany in the good old days!

Winchester is pretty strong with the party havingjust a few seats short of the Tory total and only two or three Labour councillors. Winchester City I would also note is enormous, stretching all the way from Havant nearly up to Andover containing the city, small towns (Wickham, Bishops Waltham) and loads of villages..

We spent an afternoon in Totnes a few months ago, and it reminded me very much of Lewes. Both towns have a very strong hippyish greenish feel about them, combined with a kind of snooty gentility and a very obvious aversion to chain stores.

I wonder why the Lib Dems never made the breakthrough in Totnes that they made in Lewes. Maybe its the differences in the surrounding countryside that makes the difference.

“Yes – I’ve heard from several people that in the three Lewes wards the Lib Dem vote easily outnumbered those of the other parties put together
They are dominant in local elections too – although I’m not sure by wjhat sort of margins”

At the recent county council elections they came fourth in Lewes with 7.6% of the vote, behind the Greens and Labour and an Independent who won by a country mile (but aheqad of UKIP and the Tories who didn’t get 10% between them. The same Independent also dominates in the Lewes Priory ward at district level (although the LDs won the other two seats in 2011, a long way behind her). The other two wards are Lib Dem held but not with that large a vote share as the Greens are also strong there and there is some residual Labour vote (as shown in those town council elections). What is true though is that the Tories are spectacularly weak in lewes town by any standards and particularly those of a small town in Sussex. So I’ve no doubt that in general elections when nearly all the anti-Tory vote coalesces behind the Lib Dems then the latter would indeed be winning 65% or even more in Lewes.
You are right that Newhaven and Polegate are also LD strongholds, but my impression is that Seaford is one of the more Tory areas – more so than some of the rural areas in fact. I’m pretty sure the Tories would have carried Seaford in 1997 but perhaps not in the subsequent elections which have not been as close.
Polegate is of course another place where Independents (ex-LDs) now dominate at local level while UKIP carried both Seaford and Newhaven in the recent CC elections when the LDs best area was the rural area around Lewes itself (Ringmer etc)

‘you are right that Newhaven and Polegate are also LD strongholds, but my impression is that Seaford is one of the more Tory areas – more so than some of the rural areas in fact. I’m pretty sure the Tories would have carried Seaford in 1997 but perhaps not in the subsequent elections which have not been as close.’

I think Seaford used to be a tory stronghold – but has recently been trending towards the lib dems

I imagine the Tories would have won it in 97 – though suspect it would have been closer in subsequent elections, where the lib dems are helped no doubt by Norman Baker’s incumbantcy

Seaford seems to me to be one of the nicest towns on the Sussex coast, certainly this section of it. Its a fairly dull place to be sure, but a pleasant kind of dull – not the awful drab dullnes of somewhere like Peacehaven which has you looking for the nearest cliff to throw yourself off

Joe R – that’s just the name of the Bonfire Society. I assume they commemorate Protestants who were burned alive for being Protestants. Unlike Guy Fawkes who was a terrorist. Sadly a lot of children probably believe Frank Skinner’s skewed world view.

My view on this seat is that the Lib Dems could have a nasty shock here in 2015, although will probably just about hang on. Certainly some of the trendier Lewes town Lib Dem voters will not forgive them for having thrown in their lot with the Tories – some of these are definitely ex-Brighton, ex-Labour people who will have voted tactically because Labour are so weak here. Returning to Labour or voting Green will be a big temptation for this group. In addition to that, much of this part of rural East Sussex is natural Conservative territory and their vote is unlikely to have permanently declined in the way it has in (e.g.) Brighton Pavilion. I would expect something like:

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